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delhi

not very exciting video - it's of the plane + waiting for the car at Delhi domestic airport - but I've never been so relieved to catch a flight before. even though I was safe in mumbai, it was unsettling to be there so I was happy to be going home. I was worried that my flight might be delayed or cancelled but everything went smoothly. the army was at the airport and they did all the security checks. it was probably the most efficient trip out of India I've ever had!

Delhi airport and Mumbai airport is much nicer now that it's been renovated. delhi airport was a bit dingy in 2006.

it's hard to find a good coffee in india - this is one from mumbai. there's a couple of coffee shop chains : Cafe Coffee Day & Barista. they're not too bad. but I've been spoiled by the Australian coffee shops

I actually recorded this video on 09/11/2008 but it was a large file and my computer's been playing up during exporting so I've only had time to compress it tonight.

these are the books I purchased at Mid Land Book store whilst in Delhi. I always buy the annual Sarai Reader - a collection of research papers & project documentation from India and around the world. they always have something that I'm not familiar with - different issues are covered - urban issues, social issues, resettlements, voices of local people, keeping or documenting traditional methods in art & social / community circles + more. the books are available online as pdfs so I've read some of the chapters but I like to have a paper copy as I find them easier to read.

the bookstore owner recommended other books for me to try - mostly feminist books & topics! there were so many that looked really interesting & informative, but I chose one from each publishing house so I can buy more later. some were part of a series on varying topics.

I'm not speaking very clearly in the video - I'm not used to talking & filming at the same time and I should have collected my thoughts a bit more before I started, but I don't have the energy to redo it so it is what it is :) & pulp fiction is different to the graphic novels (both were talked about at sarai i-fellows conference - but it's not clear from what I said in the video). the book "Delhi" is written by Khushwant Singh - sorry! I forgot his name whilst recording the video :(

I'm part way reading through the interviews with women writers & the short stories & the tamil pulp fiction books. yet to start the others - it might take me a while to finish. so far they're all great purchase choices! the interview book is especially interesting as it seems there were many topics that women were 'not meant to write about' in india up until, say the 1990s. I might have to find a collection of younger writers to compare with - though I note there's been quite a few younger Indian writers winning or being nominated for various international writing prizes.

the only place I've seen clear skies whilst in India this trip has been whilst flying above the clouds. often when you're above the clouds you can still see glimpses of the ground whislt there's still light - but the Delhi - Mumbai flight I took 14/11/2008 had a constant thick blanket of smog.

another thing to be lucky for - back home the skies are so clear and blue. this is going into winter in India so there's usually less blue skies, but the smog seems heavier than I remember from 2006 - perhaps I've been away too long.

Mumbai airport is really nice - I thought I'd taken a video but can't find the clip. the hotel I'm staying at is not far from the airport and has an amazing, grandiose foyer - each room opens to the foyer. it's the Intercontinental "The Grand" Hotel. owned by a wealthy, prominent Indian family / company - when you turn on the tv you see a documentary about the owner's life & the story of how he built hotels, and manufactured cars + more.

tap water in Delhi - it looks the same as home but I get sick if I drink any of this. they have free bottles of water to drink & brush your teeth with at the hotels. the hotels have extra filtration systems, but I'd rather not risk it.

in Delhi water trucks drive around the streets and people take plastic bottles & buckets to fill up once a day. in some villages / hutments (slums) the communal tap only works for an hour or so twice a day - early in the morning or later at night. whilst India gets a lot of water in monsoon season - some cities flood - there's problems with the quality of water. in people's homes there's usually a water filter for a special drinking tap separate to the main water feed. so whilst at home we take it for granted that the water from the tap is safe to drink, in some places it's a luxury.

(trying out the zoom like in the other water tap videos - I don't seem to have a macro setting, or if I do I haven't found it yet)

actually I liked the sounds of the different streams of water as it went down the drain

some links to follow up - mostly relating to the books i've recently purchased here in india - an ongoing list

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Asmita
ASMITA (literally, identity) was established in 1988 as a non-profitable, non-political and non-governmental organization by a nucleus of young enthusiastic women journalists. Its general objective is to fulfill the existing gap in participation, representation and access to media of women. It is committed to find new ways and directions for women's progress. Its major aim is to produce various publications on women in the media. ASMITA is the one and only feminist alternative media organization in the country, and it functions as a pressure group for the advancement of women through media activism. ASMITA Women's Publishing House, Media and Resource Organization (in short, ASMITA) was established in 1988 as a non-profitable, non-political and non-governmental organization by a nucleus of young enthusiastic women journalists, and started to publish the first feminist magazine of Nepal. The magazine was named Asmita which means "dignity" and "identity". In fact, this was the first movement of the organization for Nepali women's human right and empowerment through media.

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Women's World of India
Women's WORLD (India) was set up in July 2002. It is part of Women's WORLD (International), a free speech network of feminist writers, which has ongoing projects in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America. The primary aim of WW(I) is to provide a space for women writers in South Asia to analyse the circumstances in which women write, are published and read in this region, to identify the issues facing women writers here, and to develop a strategy for working on them at the national, regional and international levels.

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Blaft Publications
Blaft Publications is a new independent publishing house based in Chennai, India. Their releases so far include an anthology of Tamil pulp fiction, a translation of an experimental Tamil novel, a book of drawings, and a book of English short stories. However, in the future, Blaft has much wider goals. They are planning to eventually branch out into translations of fiction from other regional languages of South Asia, English fiction, comic books, graphic novels, children's books, non-fiction, textbooks, how-to-manuals, encyclopedias, and kitchen appliances.

Feminist Fine Print
A moderately priced, handy new series that offers two, three or four core essays on a single issue, from a critical feminist perspective. The essays may be single-authored or have multiple authorship depending on the issue, its significance within India and South Asia, and its theoretical and political implications.
- http://www.womenunlimited.net/catalogue2.htm for list of book details currently available

Yoda Press
YODA PRESS is an independent publishing venture based in New Delhi. With a view to developing dynamic non-fiction lists, both academic as well as popular, which can make available interactive spaces for further discussion, scholarship, and writing, this young venture is currently focusing its attention on areas like urban studies, sexuality and the body, gender, cinema, contemporary art and popular culture, and new perspectives in history. In doing so, the larger YODA PRESS list hopes to effectively capture the non-mainstream, alternative, yet critical reality of contemporary India. The Press invites feedback, constructive criticism, and the ever enriching exchange of ideas, which can often lead to a stunning new publication.

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Saraihttp://www.sarai.net/about-us/introducing-sarai/overview
Sarai researches the urban experience, the city, the publics and practice of (old & new) media, "information and society", free & open source software, language and digital cultures and the interface between urban transformation, contemporary culture, and development. Sarai research has flowed into conferences, books, articles, art Installations and even school textbooks. Our researchers Include scholars and practitioners. Sarai places a premium on the research process as a whole, rather than just the final outcome. This means that Sarai research material continually reaches the public domain through collaborative mailing lists, CD's, small essays, apart from conferences and research articles.

Sarai publishes books (The Sarai Readers, The Deewan-e-Sarai and the Series), pamphlets (The Media Nagar Series), broadsheets (Sarai.txt, Cybermohalla Broadsheets) and occasional publications ('By Lanes', 'The Book Box' etc.) on paper as well as on the web. All Sarai publications are copyleft and maybe freely downloaded for non commercial & edycational use from the Sarai website.

Sarai embodies a continuing engagement with creativity in urban neighbourhoods through the 'Cybermohalla' Project in collaboration with a 'Ankur' Society for Alternatives in Education, a Delhi based NGO with a proven track record of more than two decades of work in the field of critical pedagogy and community mobilization in poor neighbourhoods in the city.

Sarai supports a growing network of independent researchers, practitioners and students all over India through fellowships and stipends. Over the last five years we have supported more than 400 independent researchers from all over the country.Many of these come from small towns such in the hinterland and in spaces marked by conflict such as Jammu and Kashmir and the North East. Half the proposals that have been supported have been sent in by women, a significant proportion of supported candidates belong to ethnic and religious minorities and oppressed communities. All the proposals investigate areas that would find little or no support, either in academia, or in mainstream media, although several of the candidates have gone on to make further meaningful work in academia and the media, to a large measure due to the ground that they were able to cover in the course of the Sarai independent research proposal.

Sarai invites critical reflections on the nature of the contemporary moment, by holding regular screenings and discussion of curated programmes of fiction, documentary and experimental films and video, and by acting as a convivial context for online and offline conversations through discussions, mailing lists and blogs in English and Hindi at the Sarai space and on the Sarai website.

Sarai produces media (video, audio, print, web) and contemporary art works, CDs, radio and software. Works produced at the Sarai Media Lab have been exhibited in several international venues such as Documenta11, and the Venice, Liverpool and Taipei Biennales.

Sarai reaches out to students and faculty in colleges, institutes, university departments and student societies to organize talks, discussions, readings, screenings, screenings, informal interactions and conversations.

Sarai archives different facets of contemporary popular culture, urban space and media forms with a view to making information about them available to a wide public of researchers and practitioners.

I went to dinner tonight with Ricky from work - he took me to the Korean / Chinese restaurant K2 in Gurgaon. & he explained the dishes we had. I had battery problems so some of what he said wasn't saved. the food was very tasty! there's also a karoke room but we didn't do this! others had booked the room

driving home in Gurgaon - it's a 35km road leading up to a toll way and it takes about an hour to reach the toll in the evenings. even the motorbikes have problems getting through. maybe a 4wd would have better luck

VloMo08 - day 10
10/11/2008
Gurgaon, India

(I'm a couple of days late - was in transit and had missing luggage problems & conversions on pc haven't been going to plan)

- this one's shot using the sony hdr-cx12e (pal)
- converted to avi on windows xp using voltaic hd (win) -> the windows version converts to either avi or wmv but it fails wmv on my pc as something's missing
- then avi converted to mp4 in SUPER (erightsoft.com/SUPER.html)
- then selected 720 size in QT pro (windows) to scale screen display

I think the HD camera did well shooting at night through the car windscreen - this is using lights from the cars.

Swept off the Map: Surviving Resettlement and Eviction in Bawana JJ Colony by Kalyani Menon Sen and Gautam Bhan is a documentary look at the demoliton of "the Yamuna Pushta ‚Äòjhuggi-jhonpdi‚Äô colony, a string of settlements home to around 35,000 working class families - more than 150,000 people ‚Äì some of whom had lived here for over three decades" to make way for a "riverside promenade with parks and fountains" by the Yamuna river, marketed to the tourists who visit Delhi.

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Delhi Film Archive is a space that supports the freedom of expression and fearless listening. It is an archive of documentaries, short films, images and all other material that stimulate a collective response to censorship and the control of ideas. DFA is the Delhi chapter of Films For Freedom, an all India collective of filmmakers that emerged in 2003 to protest against censorship at the Mumbai International Film Festival and in different public spaces across India.

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when I finished my work project in Delhi last year, I was taken out for lunch by some of the people I worked with. the lunch was really nice, we went to Gurgaon, to a Chinese restuarant. part of the conversation as we were leaving was about how places in Delhi were being rebuilt.

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I finally bought a sari! Ted (from work) took a video of the shop assistant showing me how to wear it but I accidently deleted it. so I tried it on that night to take another video so I'd remember how to do it later. it's dark blue/purplish in colour with pink/magenta highlights and gold trimming. I think I paid too much but I probably won't buy too many of these. though I am hoping to get a couple of cheaper cotton everyday versions rather than this silk one. they gave me a brochure in case I forget also.